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> So we've had our little problems with giant monster roaches in the last
> month or two. No biggie. Roaches don't hurt nobody, and these are
> outdoor summer roaches that will go away when the weather changes anyway.
> And maybe now and then we get the occasional earwig or cricket; nothing
> too wild. All controllable with a squirt of Fantastik, if we even want to
> bother killing them at all.
>
> Today, we noticed a few daddy longlegs up near the ceiling in the living
> room. Then we saw a few more. So for fun the kids and I started to go
> around the house upstairs to count the spiders! At the end of the run, we
> came up with 25. One in the bathtub, and the rest on the walls near the
> ceilings. Mainly daddy longlegs; a few common house spiders. We laughed
> about it, and I said I should go downstairs to see what the population was
> down there. But I didn't bother, and soon forgot about it.
>
> Oh no, that's not the critter trouble I was talking about. Keep reading.
>
> Tonight (Wednesday), I happened to be downstairs for some reason or other,
> and glanced toward the window well. (Let me interject here that our
> "downstairs" is the finished basement, where our family room is. We
> rarely go down there now that Ewan has trouble going up and down stairs,
> so it's mainly a place for Karrde to make his wine. The two family room
> windows are set into "window wells," which are big hollow areas on the
> outside of the window. You have probably seen them before--they are your
> basic nice basement windows.)
>
> Welp, as I glanced over to the window, I spotted a huge black widow
> spider! It was in the well, so it was technically OUTSIDE of the house,
> but still a little too close for comfort. I figured I'd keep an eye on it
> over the next few days, and maybe get something to spray it with soon. As
> I was thinking this, I glanced to a different area in the same well and
> saw...
>
> ...another huge black widow spider. Two. Well, this could be a problem.
> Especially since this one had somehow made her way to the area between the
> window and the screen. Yep, should we get the urge to open the window,
> there you go.
>
> Then I noticed the egg sacs. Lots of egg sacs. Big, huge egg sacs, like
> 3/4 of an inch across.
>
> Then I noticed a smaller spider, inside. On the windowsill itself, where
> you often find spiders. A small spider, dark brown, with some white
> markings on it...but the exact same shape as a black widow. And in a
> ragged web, just like a black widow. And with some exoskeletons right
> next to it--two or three of them. Meaning it had shed several times
> recently. Meaning it was a juvenile. Meaning that it didn't necessarily
> have to look like its adult form. Meaning it was probably a young black
> widow.
>
> So off to the internet I go, to look up pictures of juvenile black
> widders. Turns out we have a young female, right in the house. WELL! I
> dispatched of THAT one quite quickly with a ton of Fantastik. It usually
> doesn't work very well on spiders, but I drowned the poor thing. So maybe
> it didn't die from the Fantastik itself, but from drowning. I don't know,
> and I don't care.
>
> Then I went to the other window. In the well, two more huge black widows.
> Maybe more; it was hard to see in the dark. And more egg sacs. I think I
> counted about a dozen egg sacs altogether between the two windows.
>
> I went back to the first window, and saw ANOTHER young spider INSIDE the
> house, and yes, having done my research, it was a young female black
> widow. Again, I obliterated this one with Fantastik too.
>
> So needless to say, tomorrow (Thursday) I am going to buy some heavy-duty
> poison. Yes, you read that right. I'd never use Raid on something silly
> like crickets or roaches--they don't hurt anyone, so poison is overkill.
> But black widows? In my house? Oh yeah. I am going to read the labels
> of various insecticides and find one that does particularly well against
> black widows, and figure out some way to get it down there. I don't want
> to get too close from outside (damn, what if there are more further away
> from the window--more toward the outside?), and I obviously don't want to
> open the windows either--the double whammy of letting poison inside the
> house AND the spider(s) being on the inside of the screen! So I have no
> idea what I am going to do, but six black widows and twelve egg sacs are a
> little too much, even for me.
>
> Get out yer gas mask!
> --S.
>
> P.S. In addition to all the spiders, there was a medium-sized praying
> mantis in one of the window wells. Karrde asked which would win THAT
> fight! I'm inclined to say the mantis, but I'd still sacrifice one mantis
> to poison if I need to.